A bit of a break

The last couple of days haven’t been great, between battling a virus and steady rain all day yesterday we took advantage of a break between systems to get out for some fresh air…

There wasn’t a duck, goose, heron or anything else in sight, anywhere near the water.  At the log bay their absence could be explained by a large black dog wandering loose all over the bay where the birds are usually located – but that didn’t explain the lack of them at this end.

The bush, on the other hand, at least away from the log bay, was very busy….saw a number of Varied Thrush – here a male

and here a female, and since we are getting to the time of year when one day we will realize they have quietly left – I thought I’d feature both of them.

Gold Crowned Kinglets were busy, way down low…have yet to see a Ruby Crowned, which seems unusual…

there have been a number of Northern Flicker around lately, I’d actually taken this picture earlier in the day, this particular bird, which was a female, caught my eye as it appeared to have a black marking on the top of it’s head, unfortunately I couldn’t catch a picture of it – maybe it was just that the feathers were wet but it looked different than the norm.

took this view out from the viewing platform.  There were quite a few Tree Swallows flying around the pilings but not really settling anywhere.

When I took this picture of a Red-wing Blackbird, I took it with the intention of explaining that the females had arrived back en masse the day before, but now I’ve down loaded it I see that this one isn’t a female but a young male – however I did look out at one point yesterday and saw 14 females in my feeder – so I know they are back.

Then just as we were heading for home this little flock of North Western Crows suddenly appeared.  Although crows are common enough at near by farms and are often seen in fall feeding on the salmon, they aren’t a bird we see every day at the estuary.

and one last one, was trying to get some pictures of the Chestnut-backed Chickadees in my yard.  That is as good as we got.